About the Book

More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology. This dazzling, cutting-edge synthesis, written for a wide audience by an archaeologist who has long been at the center of these debates, tells the scientific story of the first Americans: where they came from, when they arrived, and how they met the challenges of moving across the vast, unknown landscapes of Ice Age North America. David J. Meltzer pulls together the latest ideas from archaeology, geology, linguistics, skeletal biology, genetics, and other fields to trace the breakthroughs that have revolutionized our understanding in recent years. Among many other topics, he explores disputes over the hemisphere's oldest and most controversial sites and considers how the first Americans coped with changing global climates. He also confronts some radical claims: that the Americas were colonized from Europe or that a crashing comet obliterated the Pleistocene megafauna. Full of entertaining descriptions of on-site encounters, personalities, and controversies, this is a compelling behind-the-scenes account of how science is illuminating our past.

About the Author

David J. Meltzer is Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory in the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of Folsom: New Archaeological Investigations of a Classic Paleoindian Bison Kill (UC Press) and Search for the First Americans, among other books.

Reviews

“A must read for anyone interested in what is undeniable the greatest debate in American archaeology. . . . Essential.”—Choice

“A masterful exploration and encapsulation of the last two centuries of American archaeology and the first five millennia of the earliest Americans.”—American Scientist

“The book is . . . sharply written and narratively compelling.”—Mark Dailey Journal Of World History

“Informative and entertaining.”—E. James Dixon Antiquity

“A good review of topics and controversies surrounding the peopling of North America.”—Susan C. Vehik Great Plains Research

“[Meltzer] has written the most in-depth synthesis of the history of the debate about the early peopling of North America yet published.”—Juliet E. Morrow Journal Of Iowa Archeological Society

“Meltzer bravely tackles the many political ramifications of archeological research in the Americas.”—Silver Moon The Historian

"Meltzer's compelling account of the data and the debates takes readers behind the scenes of the often contentious arguments that have redirected the scientific pursuit of the first Americans."—Tom D. Dillehay, author of The Settlement of the Americas

"In remarkably comprehensive and lucid fashion, Meltzer synthesizes the complex and commonly conflicting evidence for the earliest human presence in the Americas and provides an honestly told lesson about the workings of scientific thought."—David Hurst Thomas, author of Skull Wars

"A natural storyteller, David Meltzer gives us a vivid picture of both the colonizing bands of humans who moved into the Americas and the researchers who followed their footsteps from Alaska to Chile. This is an insider's account, told with a keen eye and sense of humor, as if Meltzer were there when discoveries were made and when disputes were aired—as, indeed, he often was."—Ann Gibbons, author of The First Human: The Race to Discover our Earliest Ancestors

"The settling of the Americas has been a first-rate scientific puzzle since Columbus stumbled across the peoples of the Caribbean. David Meltzer is its ideal chronicler: a major participant in the research that is unlocking the mystery and a fine writer with a wry humor. Thank goodness there aren't too many scientists like him—science journalists like me would be out of business."—Charles C. Mann, author of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus